Such machine elements can be used in a large number of potential areas of application. If the machine element is used as a clamping unit, this use allows force-fit shaft-hub connections to be made due to the ring component construction with an adjusting device. For such an application, care is taken to ensure that the geometry of the individual component annular bodies used results in a base body that is as absolutely symmetrical as possible. An axial compression of the ring components by the adjusting device then results in a uniform transverse contraction towards the shaft and hub. The centering effect achievable is then classifiable at the level of the hydroexpansion principle, and is achieved with a much simpler, safer and more rigid construction than comparative solutions. To allow a high force application by the adjusting device, steel materials are substantially used, including for the individual ring components.
Another application as a machine element is in the context of guide sleeves, which constitute round linear guiding elements for machine construction and fixture and jig construction. The use of such guide sleeves is appropriate when the advantages of the slide-type guiding, e.g. a high level of damping, are to be made use of and, at the same time, minimal guide clearance is required. The guide sleeves are then employed in particular on guide racks, on round carriage guides and on tailstock sleeves. In addition to the mentioned linear movement, simultaneous rotational movements are also possible, whereas a pure rotational movement as in the case of a slide bearing is not realized for lubrication reasons. Because a joint play should be optimally adjustable for each operating condition by the guide sleeves, flexible materials are often used, for example in the form of bronze materials.
Because hydrodynamically lubricated, adjustable multi-surface radial slide bearings, as are used mainly in machine construction, likewise have ring components that can be braced against one another by an adjusting device, the basic solutions developed for clamping units and guide sleeves can also be applied to such radial slide bearing solutions.
However, particularly preferably, adjusting nut solutions or threaded rings are used, which, with great accuracy and uniform clamping forces with respect to their thread flank, can be fixed to spindle threads and the like more in the manner of third components.
An example of such an adjusting nut as a machine element is presented in DE 25 44 498 C3. In this known solution, a threaded ring serves as an adjusting nut, which is formed in one piece, and which is divided by an annular groove starting from the external circumferential surface. By an annular groove, disposed offset thereto and starting from the internal circumferential surface, into two rings in the form of a counter ring and an adjusting ring that can be contacted against an annular body to be clamped and, disposed between them, a significantly narrower spacer ring is provided. The space ring is connected at its internal circumference to one of the rings and at its external circumference to the other of these rings. The counter ring and the spacer ring have a common thread on their connection point side. The threaded ring can be braced by a number of screws extending parallel to its axis, each separately adjustable, disposed and uniformly distributed on a mean circumference. The screws are screwed into the counter ring, passing through the spacer ring with clearance and are supported on the adjusting ring.
This known machine element solution then uses a total of three ring components, which are permanently connected to one another in a back-to-back arrangement by diaphragm parts with thin-walled wall sections. Several adjusting bolts or threaded bolts uniformly distributed around the external circumference of the threaded ring serve as the adjusting device here.
If the threaded bolt has an enlarged head part diameter relative to the bolt part in accordance with the embodiment of FIG. 5, viewed in the axial adjusting direction a feeding movement occurs between at least a part of the ring components. The ring components can be moved towards one another, but also away from one another. The heads of the adjusting or threaded bolts formed as countersunk heads come into planar contact with the adjacent, facing and levelly extending contact surface of the first-in-succession annular body of the assemblage.
If only a small installation space viewed in the axial feeding direction is then available for the inserted machine element with its annular bodies, desirably the overall length of at least the ring component is reduced, on which ring component the head part of the threaded bolt or adjusting bolt can contact. However, because the threaded bolts and adjusting bolts themselves cannot be altered in terms of their geometrical dimensions and since they would then not be able to apply the required adjusting and feeding forces, a reduction of the axial installation length of that first ring component on the one hand would mean that the cylindrical screw head as the head part would then protrude and take up installation space. The residual wall thickness, which forms the contact surface for the contact with the head part of the threaded bolt or adjusting bolt, would cause a diaphragm-like bending or even a tearing apart of the residual support wall with the result that the overall machine element would be useless for the application. Nor is this situation changed if, essentially in accordance with the solutions according to FIGS. 1 through 4 of DE 25 44 498 C3, the head part has an external thread in an angled arrangement on its external circumferential side, which is in engagement with an internal threaded section of the first outside ring component.
The experts have acknowledged that this constitutes an essential problem to be solved. To remedy the mentioned drawbacks, DE 10 2004 003 183 A1 proposed a modified threaded ring solution. The known threaded ring, the one-piece body of which, provided with an internal thread, has two body parts in the form of two ring components. The first ring component forms an adjusting ring with an end-side planar surface lying in a radial plane. The second body part of the first ring component forms a retaining ring. The retaining is connected to the first body part, while forming a gap situated between both body parts by an elastically flexible wall part or diaphragm part of the body, and has an actuation device as an adjusting device. By the adjusting device, the geometry of the gap can be adjusted as a result of the elastic flexibility of the wall part or diaphragm part. The head bearing surfaces for the screw heads are designed as head parts of adjusting or threaded bolts inside the respective ring component in a defined angled manner in a tilted direction deviating from the axial feeding direction. The screw heads then come to contact at one side against the head bearing side of the adjacent threaded ring as a ring component. A threaded ring having improved efficiency is then produced that, with respect to the construction dimensions, can have a smaller construction than the solution mentioned above according to DE 25 44 498 C3.
This improved solution nevertheless still does not satisfy all requirements, with respect to the ability to apply, in a minimal axial installation space, the highest possible clamping or adjusting forces by the adjusting device to a ring component arrangement.